Welcome to The Hoosier Illuminati. Macintosh bigot, clothes horse, motorsports fanatic (as long as they turn right), Anglophile.

Clothes and manners do not make the man; but when he is made, they greatly improve his appearance. --Henry Ward Beecher

My civic duty

I felt a little queasy as I entered the polling location.  I had my drivers license in my hand, ready to show the election clerk.  “Geez, what a hassle,” I thought to myself, “I can certainly see what a disadvantage it is to some voters to have to extract a card from their wallets.” The very pretty young clerk handed my license back to me and told the older gentleman my name. 

“Are you voting Republican, sir?” There’s always the presumption here that you are going to vote Republican, but this year?  Well, this year is different.  I must have hesitated just a bit too long before responding because he asked me again.  “Sir?  Are you voting Republican?”

“D… Dem...”

Crap.  I couldn’t say it.  I’ve never said it before, and the word just wouldn’t leave my mouth.

“Democrat, sir?”

“Yes, that one.”

“Very good, please step to your right and sign the book.” Clearly he’d had to help others though this already today and I appreciate that he didn’t seem to be holding it against me, it was as if he understood.  He marked the ‘D’ box and turned the book around so I could sign.  I stared at the book for a moment, stared at the box marked ‘D’ which I was fairly sure was pulsing red.  I hoped no one I knew heard any of this exchange. 

“Sir, if you’re ready you can step right in here,” said the next clerk.  She gave me a quick explanation of how to use our county’s new machine, but I don’t believe I heard a word of it.  She stepped away and there I was, alone for the first time with a Democrat primary ballot spread before me.  It felt kind of dirty, sort of like going in an adult bookstore.

There it was.  PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.  There were two choices.  Barack Obama.  Hillary Clinton.  It felt like I stood there for an eternity, my hands shaking as my finger touched the button, and suddenly it was over.  I had done it.  I had actually done it.

I voted for Hillary Clinton. 

I stumbled away from the booth and out the door, numb, feeling like I might throw up at any second.  I had to beep my car horn to find it in the lot because my vision was a little blurry.  Somehow I managed to hit the unlock button and flop down inside the car.  I don’t even remember driving back to work, but the next thing I remembered was sitting in my chair in my office, my head still throbbing and my knees still a bit weak.  “Maybe it was a nightmare,” I thought to myself, “Maybe I didn’t really do it,” but I looked down at my jacket lapel and there it was… a sticker proclaiming that I had, in fact, voted.

It was time for me to come to grips with the reality of my situation.  Not only had I requested a Democrat ballot, but I voted for Hillary Clinton. 

Intentionally. 

I felt a little dizzy, a bit disoriented, but there I was.  A Hillary Clinton voter. 

A Democrat. 

God, has it really come to this? 

Look, I know what you’re thinking.  He’s lost his mind.  He’s had some kind of… episode, or something.  No, dammit, I do not need to see a professional about this.  I mean, it’s not like I’ll vote for her in the general or anything, but I have to do what I can to keep Che Obama out of the Oval Office.  I don’t support Hillary, but at least we know what we’re getting with her.  She’s no blank slate with no program any more sophisticated than “CHANGE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN” and “BUSH SUCKS” as if Bush were his opponent in November or something. 

I’m sorry, I don’t like this any more than you do, but I had to do what I had to do.  Still, if you don’t feel like you can come around here anymore, if you’re afraid you’re watching the beginning of a long, slow decline into becoming a member of the ass party, I understand.  Dire times call for dire measures, and damned if this doesn’t feel like one of those, but hey, I still understand if it’s something you just can’t deal with.  I’m having trouble dealing with it myself, so how can I imagine you’ll handle it?  I guess what I’m saying is that I hope this doesn’t change the way you feel about me, but if it does, well, I understand.  I hope we can still be friends. 

Thanks,
The Hoosier Illuminati

Comments

You described it perfectly.  Makes you feel a bit dirty doesn’t it.  It has been a week for me and I still feel yucky.

That is the the third Dem I have voted for in my life.  The other two times was for my neighbor who was running for coroner.

I felt like I needed to go home and take a shower, and I scrubbed and I scrubbed, but I just couldn’t get myself clean. 

I’m afraid people are looking at me, like they can tell or something. 

I’ve never voted for a Democrat, and I don’t suppose I ever will again, but if this is, as I suspect, the general election, I still voted for the right candidate… as nauseating as that is.

You are a brave man, sir.  I salute you.  But for those pesky down-ballot races I would have been right there with you.

It was bad enough having my wife tell me she voted for Obama because Hillary is such a bitch.

Of course she’s a bitch, that’s not the point.  I’ll vote for a bitch before I’ll vote for a Marxist any day of the week.  Even a bitch has the occasional agreeable day, but a Marxist is ALWAYS a Marxist. 

The man thinks we should talk to Iran, FFS.  Like if we’ll just be rational with them they’ll understand that we’re really OK guys and that they shouldn’t all want to kill us.  Tell me that time in the madrassa didn’t warp his brain. 

God, people really want that guy to be president.  That’s how badly Bush has screwed us, people are ready to vote for anyone who can string together an English sentence that makes sense. 

Meanwhile, they’re throwing the bums out all over Europe.  Conservatives are in charge in France, Spain, Germany and there was an absolute bloodletting in England last week.  I can’t wait to watch Gordon Brown stammer his way through Prime Minister’s Questions this week, Cameron won’t even let him get up, he’ll just keep punching him in the face.  And we’re going to elect this freaking Marxist because he’s the most literate of the three running. 

We suck.

As long as you vote Republican in the general election. Enough of this Democratic-socialist complex that’s been prevalent in Indiana in the past year.

Jeff, you’ve hit on the madness that has turned the world upside down. Europe has gone proto-neocon. Even the bloody French. Sarkozy’s talking to the Pope, for crying out loud, and is talking to him so seriously that the Grand Orient Masons want him driven from office. Gordon Brown just had his shit handed to him in his own worker’s cap.

And the wave that sweeps the US is for this media-created, empty-headed sock puppet, who spent 20 years in the thrall of his Marxist preacher, filling his head with James Cones’ literally insane black liberation theology, and who can’t manage to put all this “change” into words. Funny that, for a guy who is so lavishly praised at being such a wizard with words that he can’t seem to vocalize any of his policies. “The hope of change is the changing hope we hope to change in America’s changing hopes...”

And we, on the other hand, wind up with McCain.

We do indeed suck.

Top ten reasons why Jeff voted Democratic:

10.  Thought William F. Buckley would enjoy a spin in his new grave.
9.  Hillary deserves her own twenty-one-year- old intern.
8.  Global warming is harmful to polyester.
7.  Like all good Americans, he wants to pay more taxes.
6.  Admires Hillary’s acumen as a stock-trader.
5.  Wants to work with Ted Kennedy on a new government program to provide free swimming lessons to every citizen.
4.  Needs to find out where Hillary buys those attractive pantsuits so he can get some for his wife.
3.  Wants to write the Spanish words to the Star Spangled Banner.
2.  Wants to become Al Gore’s dietitian.
1.  Birkenstock doesn’t sell to Republicans.

Just kidding, Jeff. I understand perfectly why you did it. I’m considerably less than thrilled with John McCain. No, let me rephrase that. I’m really pissed that he is the best we can do. My contempt for the Clinton’s is beyond measure and I can’t bear the thought of them in the White House again for even a single day. So I couldn’t bring myself to do what you did. I’m now convinced that Obama would be the easier of the two to beat. I can foresee McCain winning forty states against him.

BIRKENSTOCK??!?!  Dude.... 

Seriously though, I don’t get the idea that Obama is going to be easier to beat than Hillary.  I heard Rush is saying that now and I just don’t see it.  There is a mania about the guy.  People are going nuts for him and they don’t know the first thing about him apart from the superficial. 

There’s this myth that he’s a great speechmaker, and in his defense he DOES say absolutely nothing as well as anyone I’ve ever heard.  “We’re going to change America and clean up George Bush’s mess!” is not a plan.  Change is not necessarily good.  Siegfried and Roy made a change to their act one night. 

What are you going to change?  How are you going to change it?  How much do these changes cost, now and in 20 years?  We don’t know.  Why don’t we know?  Because if he knows if he tells us we won’t vote for him.  He’s the biggest liberal in a Senate that contains Ted Kennedy. 

Anyway, I’m still going to vote for McCain in November.  I still think he’s going to win regardless of who he runs against.  I’ve been saying for two years now that John McCain was going to be the next president and I still don’t see any reason to take that prediction back.  I don’t like that prospect, I just think it’s inevitable.  I also think it’s a tougher election if his opponent is Obama.

McCain is going to make John Buchanan and Jimmy Carter both look good.

I will definitely be holding my nose in November.

It hasn’t been that long since I’ve held my nose. I did it 2004 when I voted for Bush the second time. I read a column by Karl Rove in the Wall Street Journal this morning in which Rove said that McCain is the right Republican candidate in this political environment. There is a lot of truth in what he says. Anyone that might be perceived as a clone of George Bush would stand little chance of being elected. None of the other Republican candidates were going to attract the moderate and independent voters that McCain will. While I think Bush, though a very good man, has generally been a lousy President and that McCain won’t be much better, I still much prefer either of them to any Democrat.

As I’ve been saying all along, McCain is hardly my ideal scenario, he’s just the only electable Republican.  Rove is right, as usual. 

And, well, what are our options?  As bad as McCain might be, he’s all we’ve got.

The cover of NR last month was dead on - Obama is being treated as a savior in a manger. If he says a lot, or says nothing at all, it doesn’t matter. Behold, a savior is born.

The only comedy relief I’m getting right now are watching the Clinton Machine supporters and the Old Democrat Guard stepping on their dicks to find a way to attack him without damaging their own liberal credentials. The old inner city black guard types who drag out their “I marched in Selma” stories every election cycle would normally be tarring Obama as “acting white” or being a “high yellow” and trashing him every chance they could get on the Tom Joyner show. But this election cycle has fallen down the rabbit hole, and the whole thing is defying the laws of physics.

A caller to the Dennis Miller Show a couple of weeks ago made the point, let’s elect Obama and finally get race off of the table in this country. Electing Obama finally shuts down the politics of the oppressed and the excuses for an entire culture of resignation to predestined failure. Maybe. There may be philosophical water in that argument. But this guy has just got nothing in his quiver. Either he has truly alarming ideas he’s holding back (bearing out his Marxist influences), or he’s really got zero to bring to the table. His mealy-mouthed platitudes about Iran and his “can’t we all just get along” world view literally scare the crap out of me, and he’s painting a bullseye on this country.

The more you find out about McCain, the more you like him, in terms of this pathetic choice we have to make. Beyond the Vietnam episode, he’s not sending other peoples’ kids to war, he’s sending his own. Sure he married a million-heiress and the boss’ daughter, but he signed a prenup, and she keeps it all if their nuptials go tits up. Screwed Boeing out of the biggest defense contract in history and gave it to the French at Airbus? Yeah sure, but it was Boeing’s own criminal activity that landed their guys in jail and lost the contract, and McCain was the white knight who said “we play by laws here.”

Obama, on the other hand, the more you find out about him, the less you like. As in “the Rev. Wright was my mentor” stuff. As in the Bill Ayers/Weather Underground stuff. (BTW, good on him for pointing out Bill Clinton’s presidential pardon of Weathermen and stuffing it up Hillary’s ass).

Still and all, I think he’ll be damned hard to beat. On the stage together they’ll look like Nixon vs. Kennedy, Dole vs. Clinton. Past vs. Future. For the millions who do the coin toss in the booth on election day, that’s a tough image to beat. IN one of the greatest speeches I ever heard, Bob Dole said, “Don’t tell me it wasn’t better in the old days,” and he was absolutely right. He brought tears to my eyes. He was right. And the media made him out to be an old crank. I look for a repeat of the same thing now.

Which brings up the other ugly fear I have. When I was in Paris, more than one European magazine has started calling Obama the ‘new Kennedy.’ Which proves they are no more insightful in the superficiality department than the US media. Sadly, I’m sure there’s a tiny clot of the terminally ignorant hiding in the hills who would love nothing more than to make the final conclusion of the Obama/Kennedy comparison a reality. I wish I was wrong.

We continue to live in very strange times.

If you really want to throw a scare into yourself, toss everything else aside and simply meditate on the prospect of Barack Hussein Obama appointing three or more Supreme Court Justices. It could happen.

Okay, that was funny. But is this your first crossover? I did it several times back in Indiana, though not quite the same. Not for a presidential candidate, usually a local or state candidate.

You know why I do NOT miss Bloomington? Gretchen HippieChick Clearwater got 31% of the vote. Not that I miss Baron Hill, but ...

I hear what you’re saying, Chris, but I keep looking around me at work and when I walk down the street, and I ask myself, “Are these guys ready to vote for a black guy named Hussein for president?” No.  No they’re not.  The black guy could be to the right of Brindle and they wouldn’t vote for him, and there are a lot of those guys.  You’ve hit on the one brilliant piece of Dem electioneering though, you can’t be critical of either of their candidates.  If you slam Obama you’re a racist.  If you slam Hillary you hate women.  The only candidate you’re allowed to pound on this year is a war hero from an unpopular war whilst in the middle of ... an unpopular war.  It’s true that the superficial is all Obama has going for him, but in a country that hangs on American Idol, what else do you need but to look good on television and have a polished delivery.  Still, I think there are enough negatives on Obama to sink him.  McCain has dirty laundry of his own though, expect to hear the name “Keating” quite a bit in the next few months. 

Jim, I made the same comment to Nathan on his blog when he said he’d never vote for McCain.  “Two words:  Supreme Court.” He did a 180 after that.  The only thing that gives me more heartburn than a McCain presidency is the thought of Obama naming Lawrence Tribe to the Supreme Court.  Tribe is doing commercials for him, FFS.  And Tribe will be there for a while. 

It really is my first crossover, Prof.  I have voted for (very few) Dems in the general election, but never in the primary.  I have a wild-eyed hippie friend in Bloomington (Hi Eric!) and I’ve never even heard him talk about Gretchen Clearwater.  After looking her up I understand why he wouldn’t have mentioned her to me.  Maybe if Mike Sodrel beats Hill again this year you’ll feel a little better about the place.  Not that I imagine that’s going to happen, unfortunately.

As for me, I’m comfortable here in my little district represented by the brilliant Mike Pence.  Sucks for you guys in Andre “The Candidate of Change Even though Grandma was in Congress for Twenty Years” Carson’s district.

Heh. I’m in Dan Burton’s district. The biggest change he’s made in 25 years of taking up space in Congress was going from hard to soft spikes, and from Top Flites to Titleists.

Dan DOES have a pretty cush gig.  Has he made a vote this year? 

Don’t get me wrong, I think Congress are generally at their best when they aren’t actually at work trying to make laws and shit.  Pence is one of the few I actually trust to go to work.

Living in Bloomington, local elections are going Democrat, so I would vote for the least nutty Democrat on the ballot. We were in the bloody 8th before redistricting, then in the 9th. This is all assuming there were no Republican races worth voting in, of course, and when we were in the 8th, well, Hostettler was always safe, so I didn’t feel bad about voting a Dem ballot. Course now, the 9th is the bloody district in the general election. Oh, and how could I pass up a chance to vote against Vi Simpson if I had the chance?

I voted for Sodrel, but I regretted it later. Well, regret is too strong; it’s not like I wished I had voted for Hill. But frankly, I don’t like Sodrel at all, and I wish the party had thrown their weight behind somebody else. But I no longer live in Indiana, so I guess it doesn’t make that much difference, except that Sodrel, if elected, will once again do his part ruining the Republican brand.

I know what you’re saying about Sodrel, he’s not the most likable individual in the Congress, Not that Congress is full of likable individuals, but you know what I mean.

I only like him on the “He’s Not Baron Hill” principle. 

I always brag on Mike Pence, but I really do like the guy and he’s a Reagan Republican.  What’s not to like?

I like Pence, a lot. I just never lived in his district, so I couldn’t vote for him.

“‘Two words:  Supreme Court.’ He did a 180 after that.”

His daughter, though, was the clincher.

I feel for you.  Walking in I felt as though I was walking into a XXX peep show.  I knew people was watching me.

I feel dirty but happy about what I done.  At least now voting for McCain won’t make my eyes bleed as much now I have done something far worse which will live in a special pit in my stompach for the rest of my life.  Right next to the memory when I was a young skull full of mush and I voted for Walter Mondale. <shudder, I was young and needed the money>

Another footsolider in Operation Chaos

This should make you feel better. Back in Indiana, I used to complain about Lugar. Now, I have Arlen Specter. At least you have Lugar.

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